The present invention is concerned with apparatus for detachably mounting casters upon dollys or other load-carrying apparatus.
Conventionally, dollys of the type employed by furniture movers consist of a rigid, load-supporting frame having casters whose mounting plates are fixedly secured to the underside of the frame by bolts or lag screws. The casters are the most vulnerable part of the dolly and require frequent replacement. In the usual case, this involves the removal of typically four or more bolts or lag screws in order to remove the faulty caster and the replacement of the same number of bolts or screws to mount the new caster.
This particular type of caster mounting relies upon the tightness of the bolts or screws to hold the caster in a fixed position relative to the frame. The shock loadings encountered by the caster in normal usage tend to progressively loosen the coupling between the caster and the frame, and the looser this coupling becomes, the more vulnerable the caster becomes to damage.
The present invention is directed to an arrangement by which a caster may be positively retained in position upon a dolly frame by means of a single bolt which is in turn subjected to a minimal amount of loading during operation.